


break

by snugglepup



Category: Homestuck, Silent Hill
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, F/M, Gamzee Makara and Karkat Vantas Moirallegiance, Gen, Horror, M/M, Mental Disintegration, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Psychological Horror, Repressed Memories, Self-Hatred, Silent Hill 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-13 13:03:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2151720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snugglepup/pseuds/snugglepup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You never thought a person could move so fast, and a gap of at least twenty feet is closed almost before you realize anything is happening at all. Something curved and razor sharp is pressed against your frozen throat and you are apparently now the prisoner of a voice that’s about as far from Mary’s as you can imagine.</p><p>“I see that hand, motherfucker,” he says, raw and furious. “One more inch toward that knife and your thinkpan's parting ways with the rest of your gross lanky husk.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Loss and Haze

_i can’t erase it because it’s with me every day_

_the strangest feeling that never goes away_

_now i have to face it because i can’t walk away_

_and i’m determined to until i break_

[ _shinedown - break_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbrhxuu58Hw)

 

* * *

 

Fog. That’s all that’s really here, isn’t there? A thick white fog where you remember bright sun and overflowing life, hideous _things_ you’re still trying not to think about too hard where there used to be ordinary, happy people, rust and decay in place of warmly aged and weathered buildings.

There’s also the fog in your _head_. Ever since you got that letter, made the choice to come here in defiance of any logic, something hasn’t been right about you. Sometimes you think of giving up, trying to find another way out of this nightmare, and then it’s like static running through your mind, confusion, dizziness, and it’s hours until you realize you’ve forgotten... forgotten what, exactly? You shake your head and blink a few times.

The park. You might find her there, or at least find something resembling answers. What were you just doing? Cold, rough, heavy metal in your hand reminds you to be careful, keep yourself together. It’s so hard to navigate in this place when you can barely see, and as you walk empty streets, pass abandoned stores, a few of which you actually remember visiting with... with Mary, you...

So hard to think. What is it about this place besides the obvious that’s...

Skittering from somewhere, where? Not behind you, or is it, in this space everything echoes and how can you use your hearing to defend yourself when sound is somehow bouncing madly from every surface and sinking into the fog at the same time? Fear is already becoming your new reality, cold and wrong, the world itself devouring your sanity one terror at a time. Why is it worse that the blood on this pipe _isn’t_ human?

A dark shape slithers across the street directly in front of you and vanishes beneath a parked car. Molars grinding against the inside of your cheek help you keep moving, your hands gripping the pipe so tightly you’re almost worried you’ll end up with tetanus. When you pass that car you can see the shadow under it writhing. Not everything here is trying to kill you, or at least it isn’t doing it constantly. Sometimes a thing that you think might have made Lovecraft put down his pen and take up another career will just... lie there, watching you or listening to your footsteps, you really don’t know, and you’ll keep watching and looking over your shoulder and forcing yourself to breathe steady, willing your heart to stop assaulting the inside of your ribcage until you’re pretty sure that it’s not going to suddenly give chase. Maybe this is another of those times. The car’s behind you now and those glances back aren’t enough to see the thing hiding beneath it from this angle, but it hasn’t _left_ and that’s what matters. One more unbearable creature content to languish in its monochrome purgatory.

Or not.

Your legs flip out from under you and you land on your back, almost cracking your head open on the asphalt, and it’s on top of you now, right in your _face_ oh _god_ oh _god_ is that a mouth _does it have a mouth_ it _does_ have a mouth or does it there’s _something_ there in its chest that’s gnashing and dripping something like tar that starts to eat through your clothes and burn your skin and you manage to get the knife loose from your waist and as you groan and struggle to roll the thing off of you that narrow blade plunges into it again and again and it _screams_ and you could almost swear the sound is human and then everything is undulating diseased flesh and blood and pus and the knife comes down and the knife comes down and the knife comes down and

it’s dead James it’s dead you can _stop_ get off get _away_ fog and gore and static and kill it kill it kill it kill kill kill kill kill kill _make it stop make the moving and the noises stop_

You have to be careful here, you remember, storefronts and rusted trucks and SUVs drifting by as you walk in what you think is the general direction of the park. Got to try to keep your head together. There could be some sort of creature anywhere, any time. It’s hard to be grateful that you haven’t stumbled on one in a long time when you’re sure there are god knows how many more wandering these decrepit streets.

Why is there a knife in your free hand? That’s strange. You must have grabbed it as some subconscious urge to cling to anything that might help keep you safe and alive and on the path to finding Mary. That’s why you’re here, really, not to survive but to _find Mary_ , to find the truth. That’s why you’re

wipe the knife clean on your pants if the blood dries it might dull the edge or will it do things work like that you aren’t really sure but you aren’t taking any more risks than you have to because you

Rosewater. Dear god, you’re here. Please be here, Mary. Be alive, somehow, _somehow_ , even be a ghost, just _be here_ , you can’t take much more of this, you really can’t, even though you know that the truth is you can take it. You’ll wander for a thousand years for her, for even a glimpse of her. For the truth. For Mary.

Somehow there’s nothing but fog along the way to the observation deck. It was so beautiful here, serene, holding her hand and watching the gentle swells of Toluca Lake glitter in twilight. All that’s left now is the goddamned _fog_ , humid and cold and smothering and

there’s someone standing there a silhouette and it’s not moving like a monster it’s not screeching it looks like a person another _real person_ and it’s shorter than you is that Mary’s height could it be it must be it has to be please let it be

You never thought a person could move so _fast_ , and a gap of at least twenty feet is closed almost before you realize anything is happening at all. Something curved and razor sharp is pressed against your frozen throat and you are apparently now the prisoner of a voice that’s about as far from Mary’s as you can imagine.

“I see that hand, motherfucker,” he says, raw and furious. “One more inch toward that knife and your thinkpan's parting ways with the rest of your gross lanky husk.” Sheer terror is not making it easy to follow what’s happening, but you see eyes that blaze like hellfire, slate gray skin, and a snarl full of shark teeth. “And drop the goddamn pipe while you’re at it.” A sting against your flesh where something pushes slightly harder into your throat, a trickle of warmth down towards your collarbone. “Do you _hear_ me, you worthless sack of pestilent alien mystery viscera?”

The pipe clatters to the ground and your mind is hissing with static and fog and fear.

“ _Say something now or you’re going to fucking die,”_ he hisses. Static. Fog. Where are you? Why are you here? Signals in your brain like black and white pixels screaming from a TV left on at three in the morning. There’s something you can see just a little bit off... an observation deck? The lake. Of course. The letter. Mary. God, how could you forget? Maybe this kid can help. Maybe he knows something.

“I’m looking for my wife,” you say. “Her name’s Mary... Mary Shepherd-Sunderland. Have you seen her?”


	2. Seeing Double

_turn on the lights, paint me a tapestry_

_go start a fire, get close to the gasoline_

_i followed you to the deep end_

_i was helpless, but you still pulled me in_

[ _shinedown - lacerated_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNxrkxpvfgA)

 

* * *

 

And there you had been just last night, thinking your moldering shit-heap of an existence couldn’t _possibly_ get any more idiotic and confusing. Just one more example of the endless string of fucking colossal delusions that still make up your inane and miserable life (god, if you had a piece of grist for every time _that_ thought’s run through your pan...). How the fuck did you even end up here, standing by some weird lake in a bunch of irritatingly persistent goddamned fog with your sickle to the throat of a human you don’t even know? Nobody like this asshole’s ever shown up in a dreambubble before, and what’s really weird is despite never learning ‘English’ (ha ha paradox space very _fucking_ clever) because all players of the Game can understand each other innately, it seems like he can in fact parse what you’re saying.

Or maybe it’s only you who can understand him, because he just blanked out for a second and then asked you, casually, like he wasn’t about to be decapitated, without a trace of the obvious and logical fear that moments before had been written on his face more clearly than all the ‘human dicks’ Dave’s drawn on you in your sleep off and on over the last sweep, whether you’d seen his ‘wife,’ whatever the hell that meant. Something is really, _really_ wrong with this guy.

Well, something’s really motherfucking wrong with this whole situation, but honestly this douchebag and his completely inappropriate response to being threatened with instant death is weirder than anything else going on.

“I don’t have a goddamned clue what that means so try to get your thinkpan in working fucking order and tell me just what the hell the deal is with the living ocean of hoofbeast shit that makes up this sad excuse for a city. You try to screw with me again and you’re losing a limb.” You raise and shake your free sickle for emphasis. He blinks and then his weird eyes (are you ever going to get used to human eyes? _no you are not)_ flicker down.

“Whoa, hey, okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. You can put that... thing away already.”

“Oh sure, I’ll abandon my primary advantage in this idiotic encounter because you dropped a metal pipe under threat of fucking death. It’s not like that knife is still attached to your coxal bone oriented garment-fastening and tool-holding band _oh wait would you look at that, it is._ Do you have _any idea_ how _outrageously_ merciful I’m _being_ here? You could be in messy squirting pieces on the fucking ground by now, I’m still giving you more chances to haul yourself out of the burning spike-bottomed pit you dug yourself and you just keep frittering them away like spare caegars on a descending and grasping recreational object retrieval station. Allow me to repeat myself: _what in the fuck is going on in this city and who the fuck are you_.”

The human stares at you for a few seconds and you _swear_ to _fuck_ you would give anything to be enough of an asshole to actually kill him without direct provocation because holy shit he’s said two sentences and you despise him already. At least this time he’s staring at _you_ and not the fucking lake over your shoulder.

“James Sunderland, I’m... not really anybody. And I don’t know what’s going on. I got here and the whole town is full of fog and... monsters.” Then he looks at you differently, like its finally sinking in that you aren’t a goddamned human, and you almost kill him right then and there. “I’d... ask if I was in hell, since you look like you’re a demon, but I guess you don’t know anything either.”

“Okay, fuckstain, if I look like some kind of monster to you, then why haven’t you tried to kill me and get away even if I have the upper hand? Do you just get off on wallowing in your own perceived powerlessness?”

“Well,” he says, and damn does he ever talk slow, “I don’t know what you are, but you’re talking to me. That makes you a person, doesn’t it?”

God _fucking_ damn it. This would be so much simpler if he was an asshole.

“No shit I’m a person. One point to James Whatever-The-Fuck for basic observational skills and reasoning, congratulations. Next question: where the hell are we?” He looks confused, like you should already know somehow, the jackass.

“Silent Hill. Haven’t you seen any of the signs?” You just stare back incredulously at this pan-blowing display of idiocy.

“I can’t read any of the signs around here because I’m not familiar with this _language_ , idiot. I don’t even know why the hell we can understand each other, I don’t speak English or whatever and I don’t think you’re a player.”

“A... what?”

“Never fucking mind. You aren’t one so it doesn’t matter. I don’t know how the hell _I_ got here, how about you.”

“I got a letter... from my wife. It said to meet her here, somewhere.” He pauses as you tap your index claw against the grip of the sickle that’s still touching his throat. Maybe you should just move that away already, you really doubt he’ll be any real threat even if he suddenly decides to attack you.

Yeah, maybe. In a minute or so.

“Do you _remember_ that under a minute ago, I told you I don’t know what the fuck that is. Is that some kind of bullshit human quadrant thing?” It’s possible you’ve heard that word before and just forgot what it means, but whatever.

“She died,” he says, completely ignoring your question. “Three years ago.”

“Oh.” You sigh and move the sickle away, slowly so you don’t accidentally slice anything. He wipes away a small trickle of red; there's another thing you'll never get used to seeing. “Yeah, that kind of shit is always awkward. I mean on the one hand, it’s great seeing your dead friends sometimes, but on the other hand sometimes shit like _this_ happens.” Scratching an itching horn, you shrug. “Okay, so this is a little extreme, but you know what I mean.”

There’s a long silence during which you wonder whether the dead stare he’s now fixing you with is his equivalent of looking angry. Could this man actually have more than one fucking mood and facial expression? Is it possible? Dear god.

“That’s not something to joke about. It isn’t exactly normal to get a letter from a dead loved one.”

Oh, right. Most people don’t actually hang out with various random copies of their dead friends at least once every four or five days. That’s surprisingly easy to forget, and now you’re the asshole in the situation. Actually, you probably became the fucking asshole in the situation when you threatened to kill him, but that’s just how things work, that does not count. Especially when it’s overshadowed by some other way to be a total bulgelicker.

“Sorry,” you grumble. “I’m sort of used to running into people who died because – I mean, people I used to know who aren't exactly among the living.”

“Oh,” he says, and you honestly have no fucking clue if he believed you just like that, or really what the hell his deal is in general. It’s seriously saying something that you’ve managed to meet someone who is actually less comprehensible as a person than a certain shithead who still wears stupid red pajamas and a cape half the time.

“Look, you’re clearly going to get yourself killed on your own and I’m feeling generous, so let’s get moving already. Your worf’s obviously not here and I want to go kill something before this conversation finally gives me a fucking aneurysm.” You start walking in a direction you’re pretty sure will get you somewhere that's not here.

“Hey,” James says. “You haven’t told me your name.”

Well, shit. It _has_ sort of been a long time since you met anybody who hasn’t at least heard of you for some reason or another, so it’s totally not your fault that you’re too much of a self-obsessed fuckstain to remember that you aren’t the axis that all of goddamned paradox space revolves around. Ugh. Way to make a first impression.

“Karkat Vantas,” you say. “Pick that fucking pipe back up already, moron, there are gross melty skin things all over the place and you look squishy enough to actually have to worry about getting killed. Oh hey, speak of the angel.” Something is shuffling along the ground through the fog, weird high-pitched noises just reaching your aural canals. When it’s finally close enough to see clearly, you realize it’s a type of gross melty skin thing you haven’t seen before; you’d say it was a woofbeast if it wasn’t moving in a certain weirdly familiar sinuous way except for brief random bouts of spasms. You raise a sickle and get ready to return to the monster butchering you've been doing pretty much constantly for the last ten or so hours.

Then you see its two mouths stacked on top of one another, the upper straining plaintive wails through long jumbled fangs as the lower hangs open, drooling thick spatters of green onto the ground.

“Oh my god,” you say, and your sickle arm falls to your side as eyes weeping something like olive tar lock with your own. “What... the fuck –“

You’re not ready at all when it lunges straight for your throat.


	3. Rogue's Blood

_welcome to nowhere and finding out where it is_

_and fixing your problems and starting over again_

_you're feeding your ego with what you can see outside_

_and you're killing yourself for not speaking your mind_

[ _shinedown - in memory_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOGhFgX2NYA)

 

* * *

 

How is this weird gray-skinned kid so casual about everything? You've been sort of disoriented and maybe _not_ as upset by all of this madness as you should be, but he's acting like it's completely normal. While you've been stumbling through fog-choked streets, struggling to keep your thoughts cohesive, to survive, he acts like a soldier or something, he just told you he wants to go out of his way to find another monster and kill it... why? To relieve stress? At least he didn't kill _you_. And maybe he can help somehow, maybe he does know something and he just doesn't realize that.

Something's starting to shift in your mind. Is it because you aren't alone? Because the things... what was his name... Karkat?... said were so jarring? You can't tell, but the fog in your head feels like it's starting to clear. It's like something about the situation is fundamentally different, like maybe you won't feel like you're losing time anymo

squeals like a kicked cat when the pipe hits it in the side and it crashes into the ground and whimpers when you bring it down again and again and gurgling streaming sticky green blood vomit smash it over and over on your knees pulp its insides cave in one of its mouths and pop an eye splatters of olive on your clothes on your shirt on the pipe on your face pipe hits concrete and rattles knife yes the knife into the throat the top mouth past fangs scratch your skin thrust up punch through bone slides into goo so it does have a brain shudders choking on your

 _"HEY!"_ There are hands around your arm, pulling on it. It kind of hurts. Your knees ache, too, pressed against something cold and hard. Concrete? "Don't take this the wrong way but holy shit get a hold of yourself you bloodthirsty motherfucking sadist, I thought you people were supposed to be _nice_ and mostly pacifistic, what the _hell?"_

Who's that? He sounds familiar and he helps you stand up, which is pretty considerate, probably. Your clothes are wet in places and there's hot sticky stuff on your arms and one cheek. There's a teenager with... gray skin and orange eyes and horns? Who is that? He slowly lets up on the vice grip one of his hands still had on your lower arm. Is that some kind of demon? But he's talking to you, that means something, he doesn't look like the same kind of monster as the rest of...

Oh, wait, you do know this kid, you think, the memory is hazy like a dream you never would have expected to remember years later. Angry, paranoid, and he did... something? You think he must have done something good, maybe, because you're not afraid of him for some reason. What's his name, though...? Car... Ca something, but the consonants were harsh and that makes you think it's _Ka_ something...

"Kar... Sorry, I can't remember your name. Did you call me a sadist? Why? I'm looking for... did I say that?" He just stares at you, devil eyes full of something like wariness. "Don't be so loud, there are monsters around here. One of them might hear you and find us." For some reason his jaw drops, just a little bit, exposing what look like pretty vicious fangs. Maybe not all demons are evil, though.

Where the hell is Mary? Rosewater, you made it but she isn't here. You have to find her. That's why you came, that's all that really matters.

"I called you a goddamned sadist because you killed that thing so brutally even _I'm_ kind of creeped out and my species is _wired_ to enjoy murder, but... You just kept _going_. I mean, you kind of maybe helped me not die, _I probably had things under control_ but, um, thanks? It's not like it was a bad kill, but..." Kar... Karkat, that was it, you think, is still staring at you like _you're_ the demon and he's completely normal. Wait, he said you killed something? You were just starting to leave the park while he ranted. Maybe. It must have been something like that. Then he looks down at something, so you do too.

There's a... thing, down there. It kind of reminds you of the creatures you've been hiding from all this time, but it's all white except for this green blood-like stuff all over it and the ground. Oh, god, it's awful, it almost looks like it was run over by a car, there are oozing guts on the ground... Just seeing it all makes you sick to your stomach.

You wipe something nasty off of your face and then see that it's green, the same shade as all of that blood. He said you killed something. But that's _crazy_ , and even if you had to fight one of these monsters...

"You're saying I... that I did that? That's not possible."

"Oh god, you _are_ insane, that's just great, isn't that just the perfect sugarslime top-layer on this grubcake. I'm stuck in some shitty mysterious alien town with a delusional fucking berserker. Thanks _so_ much, paradox space, that's exactly what I wanted for Twelfth Perigee's Eve. Fucking _hell_."

Your pipe, you should find it, you might need it if something dangerous shows up. You find it a few feet away but it's... soaked in the same green blood-like stuff, and when you try to reach down you realize that you're holding your knife in one hand, and the whole thing, hand included, is actually _dripping_ with green.

"Did I really kill that thing? What _was_ it, anyway? It's not like any of the other monsters I've seen in this town." Karkat groans and shakes his head.

"Yeah, you turned the lususpailing freak into street rot just with a pipe and then you _stuck your hand in its fucking mouth_ to, I don't know, get to the brain maybe, but it was already dying, what was the point?" He's lying or he's crazy, you couldn't do anything like that, it doesn't even make sense. You wonder if he's seen Mary. Probably not, but it's possible... or did you ask about that already? Everything feels like it's happened before, somehow.

None of this can be real, but... the evidence is all there. You really must have killed that monster. There's no point trying to argue, is there? You're covered in its blood and so are your weapons.

"... Why don't I remember? Why did I forget killing... that thing?"

Suddenly something else leaps into your mind. A clearer memory, you were walking with the demon kid and for some reason, even though he didn't care about any of the other monsters, he froze up when he saw this one, and when it leapt at him you tried to...

"Don't ask me, murder guy, my specialty is being a worthless asshole, not figuring out what's wrong with mood-swapping psychotic... with... fuck. Oh, fuck." What just happened? He looks stunned all over again, like something horrible just crossed his mind. Should you say something?

"Why were you scared of that monster? You acted like none of them were even dangerous to you, and you didn't sound like you were faking that."

Karkat narrows his eyes, but he doesn't look angry. He looks upset, confused... and sad? The muscles in his face aren't exactly the same as a human's, you don't think, but they're pretty similar, and as a few seconds pass everything seems to fade from his expression apart from a bitter sort of misery.

"It just reminded me of someone I got k-... of a dead friend. And h-her, her lusus, but... No, hell no, never mind, fuck it. It's not important." He sighs and hardens his eyes. "Look, I'd just about rather let somebody funnel spiders into my goddamned nook than try to get anything useful out of _you_ , but it seems like you've been to this godforsaken shithole before and I have no idea how to get out, especially because it doesn't seem like a dreambubble, so... ugh. I cannot believe I'm sinking this low. Fine, whatever, who needs dignity anyway. Where the fuck should we go?"

"Uh... I'm looking for my wife, and the next place I think she might be is a hotel we used to stay in together on vacation... It's not very close, and I don't know how to get there now that everything's changed, but we could look for a way." We. We. Not I, _you,_ any more, there's a... we, now. What does that mean?

"Well, lead the fucking way, because I didn't get here on foot so who the hell knows how I'm going to get back to the meteor anyway." Meteor? What is he talking about? Wait, maybe he's not a demon, is he...

"Are you... an _alien_?"

The look on his face is so full of contempt and confusion that it almost startles you.

" _No fucking shit I'm an alien, asshole_ , how did it take you this long to _notice?"_

"You don't have to be rude about it. But there's a boat launch down the street if there aren't any more giant holes in the ground, and maybe there are still boats there. We could take one across the lake right to the hotel, if nothing goes wrong."

"Oh god, never say 'if nothing goes wrong', now you've basically cursed the shit out of us. Thanks a lot, bulgepore. Fuck, I hate you. Uh, not like _that_ , I mean, you're just a total piece of shit. Don't get any ideas, I've already got somebody I'm pitch for and they're definitely not a total stranger I literally met less than five minutes ago."

You're really not sure what to say to that, so you just start walking, your gore-soaked pipe clutched tight in your hands, a cursing alien/demon following you and keeping watch, and static from your radio slowly growing louder and louder as fog begins to seep back into your mind. Everything is wrong, nothing makes sense, and you're starting to think that maybe you actually _are_  going crazy.

But at least for the moment, you're not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I make it through an entire fic using only Shinedown lyrics to start each chapter? _Let's find out._


End file.
